


That Mood Indigo

by gnimaerd



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-13 02:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3364553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in a diner 1947; Iris is a waitress and aspiring novelist, Barry is her favourite customer. Anything else between them would be illegal. But in the face of overwhelming prejudice against her, Iris dares to dream, and write, and fall in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bluer Than Blue Can Be

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: at the risk of stating the obvious, this fic deals with racism. I didn't use any actual slurs worse than 'girl', but worse are alluded to and in the third chapter there will be one specific incident of racial abuse described, though it isn't violent. I tried to keep the actual tone of this story fairly light and whimsical, close to that of the show itself, but I couldn't avoid the realities of what life for a young black woman in America in 1947 would have been like (nor would it have been honourable of me to do so). Iris and millions of others like her would have had to deal with an overwhelming deluge of racist, sexist bigotry on a daily basis, and I tried to address that reality as respectfully as possible from my position as a white writer creating fanfic about TV/comic book characters.

 

Barry Allen becomes Iris’s favourite customer mostly by accident.

It’s not that he does anything especially noteworthy, not at first. In fact it takes three months before he even really talks to her – the first time he comes in he stutters, blinks at her, asks for ‘just coffee, please, ma’am.’ And hands her back the menu with his long thin hands.

But he’s always polite, quiet, respectful. She can tell by the state of his clothes (the carefully patched pants, the thread-bare jacket, the unfashionable hat), that he doesn’t have money, but he always, always tips properly. He calls her _ma’am_ rather than _girl_ (or anything worse). He doesn’t stare at her behind or her chest. He makes eye contact when he orders. He’s always a little late, always in a hurry, but he’s never impatient or rude. He’s always turned out sharp – hair combed, nails clean.

 He always greets her in the mornings when he runs in for coffee, and when he comes back, every other evening or so, for dinner, he nods hello like they know each other, like they’re friends. Then he sits quietly in his booth with a book, reading and shovelling eggs and ham into his face like he’s scared someone’s gonna take the plate away from him. Still, he’s so skinny, maybe that’s something that really happens to him.

Barry’s so skinny that she starts packaging up the diner’s leftovers for him, at the end of each day. She takes home a lot of the stuff herself – a girl has got to eat – but she saves him the odd cookie, a stale bagel, a couple of slices of pie.

He scarfs it all down with impressive speed. “I’m gonna marry you one day,” he tells her, with a grin, and she laughs.

“You don’t even know my name.”

“It’s Iris West,” he replies, surprising her. “I heard your boss call you Iris, and there’s a shift board up in the kitchen with all the servers names on – I see it sometimes, when the door swings open. I’m Barry Allen, by the way. I mean, since I know your name, and all…”

“Well it’s nice to meet you, Mr Allen.”

“You too, Miss West.”

And when she smiles at him he blushes all the way to the tips of his ears.

Barry mostly reads big thick science-y looking books – but when he reads fiction they’re those cheap hardboiled detective stories, or science fiction paperbacks with robots and aliens on the covers. Sometimes he gets so engrossed in them, he doesn’t notice his coffee mug’s empty, and sips mechanically from thin air whilst he’s reading.

She sidles over, one evening, after he’s been swigging from an empty cup for half an hour, to offer him a refill.

“Whatcha reading?”

“HG Wells,” he shows her, “The Time Machine. You know it?”

She shakes her head. That evening after he leaves, she finds the book finished on the table with her tip inside, and a note scrawled inside the cover: _please enjoy the book_. She can tell he wrote and erased at least three different versions of this note from the state of the paper inside.

She takes The Time Machine home with her and reads it in bed, although she decides she doesn’t much care for it, especially the Traveller’s treatment of Weena.

“He just kept her, like some kind of pet, and left her to burn when he had no use for her anymore,” Iris complains to Barry the next day, offering him the book back.

He seems to take it like he, and not the book, has upset her. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, glancing away. “I’ll find you another.”

That’s how they begin this thing where he brings her his science fiction books, and she complains about them. It gets to be such a ritual that after the sixth one she rejects (“Why would aliens look like that?”) he laughs.

“Why don’t you write a book yourself?” He asks, sitting at the counter, swinging his absurdly long legs and digging through the blueberry pie she’s just put in front of him. “If you don’t like these ones?”

“I’m working on it,” she replies, and his expression brightens, his gaze curious.

“You’re a writer?”

And she shrugs, self-consciously. “I guess. Working on it.”

“Oh,” he says, “gee. Well, that’s just swell.” He’s rubbing the back of his neck with a hand, his mouth upturned. “What do you write about?”

“Life. The city.” She waves a hand. “Work. The people who come in here – they all have good stories, or they make good characters.”

“You ever put me in one of your stories?” He asks, glancing at her from under his eyelashes – he has these really long eyelashes, makes him look all young and soft and sweet, like a baby deer.

“Not yet. I’m saving you up till I gave a good idea.”

“What kind of idea?”

“Love story, maybe,” she has no idea why she says that. Maybe she wants a reaction out of him. He does sort of squirm, his face going from milky-pale to rosey-pink, rubbing the back of his neck again. “You look like the sort.”

“Do I? Well. Gee.” He mutters, and she could just eat him up with a spoon right there, couldn’t she? Well. Damn.

“Why don’t you lend me one of your proper science books?” She asks, “maybe I’ll find an idea in there.”

“Okay,” he brightens, and proceeds on a long explanation of his current read – something about how planets form – and gets all excited and flustered trying to explain the finer points to her.

That night she tries to write him a love story. She pulls out the peace of junk type writer she got for a steal from the pawn shop two blocks over, and hammers out three pages in quick succession. She pictures a pretty blond girlfriend with freckles and a Nebraska accent. She’s sick, maybe – maybe even dying – maybe that’s why Barry always looks a little sad, just round the edges. Maybe he’s so poor and skinny because he’s using all his money to pay for treatments.

But she doesn’t like the idea of a dying girlfriend, not for him, so she tears that one up and starts again.

She tries a red-headed girl, fiery and pale – a girl who teases him and makes him laugh. She pictures a brunette, slim and clever like him. She imagines a femme fatal from one of his detective novels – blood-red lips and fine, ink-black hair and big blue eyes….

But none of them seem right. No number of pretty white girls will sit with Barry in her head and somehow the whole exercise leaves her feeling tired and sad.

 She picks up his science book and can’t get through the first chapter before her head aches. Barry seems to understand every word of this but it might as well be written in a foreign language to her – he might as well be from another country. Another world.

(He practically is, isn’t he?).

“I don’t know where you studied to get your head round all of this,” she waves the book at him the next morning, “I can’t make heads or tails of it.”

He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I’m a brainiac.”

“You must be some kind of scientist, huh?”

He shrugs, shakes his head. “Nah. Just a clerk. Over at the police station.”

“You’re a cop?”

“I work for the cops. No one would ever let me anywhere near a badge and a gun, believe me.”

She’s kinda relieved if she’s honest. She doesn’t like the idea of him with a badge or a gun.

“How come you read all this stuff, then?” She nudges the book, “you fixing to be a rocket scientist when you grow up?”

“Like you’re fixing to be a writer?” He asks.

“I’m already a writer, thank you very much.”

He smiles. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t like me very much, if I told you.”

“Hm?”

“About why I – about the books, and stuff. What I’m trying to find out.”

She leans her elbows on the counter in exactly the way her boss is always telling her not to, props her chin on her fists to eye him sceptically. “Try me.”

But he shakes his head. “I’d rather not.”

“Girl!” There’s a big guy with small, mean eyes at the other end of the counter, banging his coffee cup on the table, “quit lollygagging and get yourself over here!”

Iris doesn’t bother to contain her eyeroll at Barry, whose small, sympathetic smile insulates her for the rest of the day.

That night, when Barry’s back for dinner, he sits at the counter with her instead of in his usual booth. There’s a bruise turning the edge of one of his eyes purple, which wasn’t there this morning. Iris resists the urge to reach across and touch it.

“What did you do to yourself, mister?”

He smiles, ruefully. “Got on the wrong side of one of my bosses.”

“You want some ice?”

It’s late and they’re alone aside from the drunk who always comes in to sleep for an hour before they close. She brings Barry ice wrapped in a cloth with his plate of ham and eggs, and though he pulls out a book, he watches her from under those long eyelashes of his the whole hour it takes him to eat.

“They thought I was stealing evidence,” he tells her, whilst he’s pushing the last of his meal around his plate, “but actually, I was putting it back. I mean. I’d borrowed a case file. But I was putting it back.”

Iris nods, slowly.

“Stupid really,” Barry mutters, mostly talking to himself now, she thinks, “could’ve got fired. I’m really good at my job, else I would’ve been. But I’m the only one who understands the filing system in there and they all know it, so…”

“You don’t seem all that stupid to me,” Iris points out, and Barry only laughs, sort of humourlessly. “Why’d you do it?”

Barry purses his lips, steeples his fingers, then casts his gaze down, away from her. “You ever see something you can’t explain, Iris?”

Iris considers the question seriously for a moment. “You mean like – aliens or ghosts or something?”

Barry’s mouth quirks. “Yeah. Maybe. I guess.”

Iris shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

His face falls and he glances down at his nails again. She reaches for his wrist but stops herself again – damn, why does she want to touch him so much?

“Doesn’t mean I don’t believe in… I mean, I believe in God, so…”

He nods, glancing up at her. “I don’t want to tell you something that might make you think less of me, Miss West. I like it here. I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“I’m sure you couldn’t make me feel uncomfortable, Barry.”

He glances down, touching the back of his neck.

“You chew that lip any harder you’re gonna split it, Mister.”

He laughs, but he doesn’t say anything more, so she goes back to clean up behind the counter, and when she’s half way through arranging all the coffee mugs in nice, clean rows on their shelves, he says, “my mom was murdered when I was a kid. They put my dad away for it.”

And she has to turn around and look at him because she’s not sure she heard him right.

But she did, didn’t she? And oh god, that explains a lot. Especially the sadness around his edges.

“It wasn’t him though,” Barry is rubbing his eyes with his thumbs, all twitchy and uncomfortable. “I saw it happen. I know it wasn’t him. There was someone else in our house that night. But I was just a kid. No one listened to me.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, returning to the counter and – compulsively – refilling his coffee mug.

He nods, mutely. “That’s what I was doing. I try to find similar cases, you know? Investigate. I try to read a lot, try to learn to – to understand what I saw that night. There’s gotta be something out there that’ll solve it, what happened.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t think less of me for it?” He glances up at last, eye lashes trembling.

“Why would I?”

“Cause no one ever believes me, not really,” his smile is so sad she wants to kiss him, “they think – that poor kid just can’t handle the truth of it.”

“But why would you lie about something like that?”

His smile reaches his eyes this time. “I wish more people would ask that question, Miss West.”

That night she writes Barry a love story – a skinny white boy living in the future, a big city all glass and metal, flying cars and robots and no aliens, no – she makes up a special group of people who have special powers, like they do in comic books. In the story Barry has these powers, too; he solves mysteries with them, he catches criminals, he defends the poor and vulnerable.

She keeps this story, though she doesn’t show it to him. Mostly because she’s afraid he’ll recognise the reporter character she makes up, the one he falls in love with, in the story, and saves and cares for. (Because in this future, young black girls can be like that – they can be reporters at important newspapers, write big stories, investigate big mysteries, be listened to, be respected).

The next day, when Barry appears in the morning rush, with his poor eye swollen up even worse, Iris slips him a free bagel, though she knows she could get fired for giving food away in front of everyone like that. He looks so pleased and grateful, like she’s just handed him a puppy or something, that it’s worth it the whole dame day.

That evening he sits by the counter again, and pretends to read, and looks at her instead, and she feels happy and warm under his gaze as she nips around the diner looking after the other customers, knowing he’s there, can’t take his pretty eyes off her.

And then some snot of a kid calls her an ugly name and her little golden bubble bursts just like that, and she feels like an idiot for forgetting, even for a second, what she is to these people.

It’s not that she doesn’t hear words like that every day – she’s good at deafening herself to it, she has to be; she writes stories in her head whilst she keeps a smile on her face and tolerates everything from _girl_ to – worse. But something about it happening in front of Barry like that, which it hasn’t before, not quite that bad – something about the way Barry’s face reddens and his eyes narrow – makes it worse.

Iris is so exhausted, all of a sudden, that her eyes prickle and her stomach turns and she has to slip out back and bury her face in her little white uniform apron to blot her tears.

This is her fifth twelve hour shift this week and her feet are bruised and her back aches and she can’t take another name, another look, another moment of this place.

“Miss West?”

Good Lord what is he doing back here? Iris turns her back on Barry with a jerk, still hiding her face. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

“I just wanted to…” he clears his throat, awkwardly. “To check you were… okay?”

“I’m fine. Go back inside.”

“You…” she can tell by the sound of his feet scuffing that he must be hovering, awkwardly, behind her, probably touching the back of his neck the way he does. “Forgive me, but you don’t seem fine.”

“No, well, what’re you gonna do about it?” She wipes her face, not turning round. “You gonna fix the world for me, Mr Allen?”

She doesn’t mean to snap, but it seems to have the desired effect – he goes quiet, and she thinks he’s gone back inside until she feels his hand on her arm, gentle and tentative. “I wish I could.”

Iris glances at him, from under her wet eyelashes, and swallows hard. He looks so good and so kind and so tender that she only feels worse. “What do you want from me?” She asks, swallowing again, trying to keep her voice level. “Come in here every day and look at me like you do and I… what am I meant to think? That you’d ever… I mean, the world we live in? Really? You and me?”

“Iris…” Barry is shaking his head, “Iris…”

And then he pulls her to his chest and she never wants to let him go, he feels so warm and solid and real, better than anything she could ever put on a page. She can hear his heart thudding fast beneath her ear as he cradles the back of her head with one hand, squeezes her waist tight with the other. Iris wraps her arms around him, and he presses his mouth to the top of her head, clumsy and strange, and she feels her pulse stutter.

“You wanna kiss me, Mr Allen?” She asks, her voice strange even to her own ears, low and shaky, tipping her face up to look into his – he stares down at her like she’s some kind of miracle, his smile quizzical.

“Yeah,” he replies, “that okay?”

“You better do it quick – my boss is gonna come looking for me any minute.”

So he kisses her, cupping her jaw with his hands. It’s close mouthed and it’d be almost chaste if it didn’t go on so long – she pushes herself up onto her tip-toes (good Lord she’s never registered before quite how tall he is), and puts her hands up to the back of his neck to tug him down to her.

That’s how Iris claims Barry, just for a moment, just for now, he’s all hers in that gentle crush of his mouth. There’s nothing anyone else can do to take him from her.

Then someone is calling her name and she pushes him away from her, catching her breath, trying to pull her head back down out of the clouds and into the reality of a full diner, enough to go back inside and do her job without tripping over her feet or floating off into the sky.

Barry lingers by the counter for the rest of the night, reading. She waits until the diner has emptied out and her boss has gone home, and flips the ‘closed’ sign on the door, then pulls out the left over pie – strawberry and rhubarb today – and heats each of them up a slice, spoons on cream and brown sugar.

“I’m gonna marry you one day,” Barry tells Iris, when she lays a plate and a spoon in front of him. “Just you wait.”

Iris snorts, sits down and slips off her shoes, curling her toes with relief. “Take a girl out to dinner first, maybe.”

He doesn’t answer for a moment, though his mouth turns up at the corners, his eyes crinkling. His bruise has gone down a little. “Okay then.”

Iris quirks an eyebrow, dips her thumb in the cream on her plate, meets his gaze for a moment and then glances down, because he can’t be serious. A cuddle and a sweet kiss is one thing, maybe – even if, in the moment, it had felt like everything – but he cannot be seriously suggesting that they go out. Together. In public.

Does the poor boy have any idea what he’s suggesting?

“What?” Barry asks, chewing, “what’s funny?”

Iris shakes her head.

“Would it be so – I mean – totally… unreasonable if we just… went out to dinner? Two people can’t go out to dinner?”

“Two people like us?” Iris gives him a long, sceptical look. “Barry. Do you not know how we’d be treated? How I’d be treated? You get that there are places in this city where I’d have to go in through a separate door to you, right?”

Barry purses his lips, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well. Okay. What if we don’t go out to dinner? What if we… stay in? For dinner?”

“What do you mean?”

“You could – come round to – my place? For dinner?” Barry lifts his eyebrows and looks so hopeful she’s tempted to lean over and pinch his cheek. “Or – or – I could come to yours I mean – it’s – totally up to – up to you… whatever you want.”

His ears have gone pink.

“Okay,” she says, before she can think too hard about it. “Okay, you come round to mine.”

“Really?” He blinks at her.

“You’re asking, arentcha?”

And Barry grins so wide he looks like his face might split open.


	2. You Ain't Never Been Bue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry and Iris go on dates in her apartment, slow dance to Duke Ellington, are adorable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can listen to the first movement of [Black, Brown and Beige here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp2pSejiNp4); and [Mood Indigo here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4wVKbQsKB4). (And I suggest you do, cause Duke Ellington, you guys - you guys, Duke Ellington).

Barry comes round with a basket of food, that Saturday evening.

Iris has spent the whole day – her one day off this week – fussing. She tries to keep a neat little place but the fact remains that it is very little indeed. She has one room, just big enough to accommodate her single bed, a table, two chairs, her father’s record player, a bookshelf and a trunk of clothes. There is one window, big enough to let her out onto the fire escape outside, and a square of floor in front of it not occupied by any furniture, and that is just about all of her free space.

She is also not, by habit, a tidy person. Clean, maybe, but not tidy. She accumulates clutter with a kind of gravitational pull she’s never been able to shake, and she is the sort of person who bounces from hobby to hobby, project to project, and leaves a little trail of incomplete things behind her (there are socks still half-knitted which she meant to send off to soldiers on the front during the war two years ago, for god’s sake). Which means that her little place is packed to bursting with miscellaneous Stuff.

She hides as much as she can under her bed and in her clothes trunk, and dusts everything else, and sets candles on her table; then she pulls out the pretty white dress she salvaged from a thrift shop six months ago and hasn’t had an occasion to wear since.

Iris has applied and wiped off makeup four different ways when she hears a whistle outside, and peeps out her window to see Barry in the alley under her fire escape, with a basket and a smile, his hat cocked to the side like he thinks he’s really something. And she can’t watch him climb up, he’s so ungainly, all elbows and knees, she’s convinced he’ll slip and break his neck – he drops his hat once and has to go back and get it.

But once he’s there, climbing in through her window, making her little room seem even smaller, Iris can’t do anything but stare. It’s funny, seeing him outside of the diner. He looks more real, somehow. And he’s put himself together a little – she’s never seen him in suspenders before, and that is absolutely a new tie – and she stands back, feeling silly and shy all of a sudden.

“Well, gee,” Barry looks around, taking off his hat and rubbing the back of his neck, “this is – swell.”

“Why don’t you put that on the table,” Iris indicates the basket and he obliges, neatly, glancing at her from under his eyelashes.

“You look…” he smiles and laughs, the sound a self-conscious constriction in his chest. “I like your dress.”

He’s never seen her out of her diner either, of course – not out of the uniform – let alone in a dress like this. She smiles back, shifting onto the balls of her feet and back. “Thank you.”

The food is a lot.

“You really like to eat, huh?” Iris laughs, because there isn’t gonna be enough room for everything on the table.

Barry smiles, ruefully, as he lays out half a roast chicken next to a whole loaf of bread and a tub of butter and a pork pie. “Grew up in an orphanage,” he points out, “food’s not something I take much for granted, these days.”

And Iris lets her hand go to his back, tentative at first but – there’s no one here to spot her touching him, now, no one to jeer or knock her back – she splays her palm there and he smiles down at her for a second.

“It’s nice, Barry,” she says, “thank you.”

Barry produces a pink carnation from the basket and offers it to her with a little flourish that makes her laugh again, and she tucks it into her hair and keeps it there for the rest of the night.

She puts a record on her dad’s player (the first movement of Black, Brown and Beige, all quick bright notes and sharp, industrial rhythm), and lights the candles, and they sit at the table together and eat.

“I like your music,” Barry says, as he taps his feet against his chair leg, “what’s it called?”

Iris can’t believe this clever boy has never encountered Duke Ellington before, and has to explain about the big bands her dad used to take her to see before the war.

“When Duke Ellington comes back into town,” she says, “I’ll take you to see him play.”

“I’d like that,” Barry nods, “his music sounds very interesting. Mathematically speaking.”

Iris giggles. “Brainiac.”

He grins and goes back to cutting up his chicken.

They share her bed that night.

They only sleep, of course. Iris is not that kind of girl. And as it turns out, Barry is not that kind of a guy, either. He doesn’t touch her, the whole night. Sleeps on top of the covers fully clothed, wrapped in the spare blanket, like a gentleman.

He stays because Iris looks out her back window, at the long dark alley he’ll have to walk down all alone at this time of night if he’s to get out of her building unseen, because they’ve got lost in talking to each other and it’s much later than either of them intended him to stay until. She thinks about the long, dark walk all the way back to his place; and looks at her funny, skinny brainiac, so gentle and kind, and remembers the guy who was mugged half a block away from here the week before…

“Stay,” she offers, softly. “It’s late.”

“I – wouldn’t want to intrude,” his ears go scarlet.

She glances out of her window again, at the fire escape he came up, “I just don’t like to think of you, out there on your own.”

“I’ll be okay, Iris.”

“Stay,” she gives his arm a little squeeze, “give me some peace of mind.”

Barry glances around her little place, at the remains of their dinner on her table, and the candles melting, dripping wax everywhere – the air still smells waxy, and like the stew her neighbour must be eating. It’s warm and quiet and the glow of her bedside light and the candles casts everything in shades of honey and gold. Iris is looking up at him with her big, dark eyes, her neat little hand on his arm.

Outside, the night looks less attractive by the minute.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” he says, practically, and she agrees – although there’s not much more room for him on the floor than there is in her bed.  

She gives him her spare blanket and a pillow, and he obligingly closes his eyes and faces away whilst she changes into her night gown, waiting until she’s safely and decently hidden beneath her comforter.

Then he puts out the candles, and she turns out the lamp, and they lie in the strange intimacy of the darkness for a long while, listening to the wireless playing in the room to the left, and to the couple arguing in the room to their right.

“Barry?”

“Yes, Iris?”

“…you wanna come up here with me?”

She hears him catch his breath for a moment, and when he answers it’s with a stammer that makes her heart kick against her ribs. “I wouldn’t – want to – try anything indecent.”

“No,” she murmurs, “just maybe if you lay next to me, on top of the blankets, mind you, you might be more comfortable…”

And she waits another second or so, before he sits up and blinks at her in the gloom, his hair already muzzed up from the pillow.

“You sure?”

“I trust you, Mr Allen. You try anything and I’ll slap you from here to next Thursday, though.”

She can see his small, sheepish smile.

“I cross my heart, Miss West.”

So he climbs up next to her.

There’s not really enough room for him – the metal frame creeks in protest, and his feet hang off the end of it. They try to stay a semi-decent distance apart across the scant six inches they can manage, if she presses herself to the wall on one edge, and he half hangs off the other, but by the morning they’ve huddled together, her beneath the comforter, him on top. They’re almost nose to nose, in fact, when Iris opens her eyes to the dim, pre-dawn light and the sounds of the city stirring.

Her room is so cold in the mornings that she can see his breath rising in little puffs of steam. She’s tucked herself against his shoulder, and his arm has fallen across her waist, and he looks so vulnerable and still in his sleep that she’s overcome with a sweet sort of tenderness, all of a sudden. She wants to touch his face, and his long, spidery eyelashes, and his delicate mouth.

She satisfies herself with his hair, which has come totally uncombed – strokes it back out of his eyes, just a little, and he blinks slowly awake and stares at her, like he can’t believe who he’s looking at. The smile he offers up is slow and drowsy and warm as a sunrise. He looks so damn happy to see her Iris smiles back, nose to nose with him on her pillow, stroking his hair.

He lets out this soft, drowsy snuffle. “Mornin’.”

“Hey.”

He turns his head a little, just enough to kiss her fingertips.

Then she has to suggest that perhaps he’d best be on his way now, or he’ll be seen – and he agrees, reluctantly, though he lingers a little bit, and she realises he must be late so much because he likes to dawdle. He lingers in her bed, whilst they have a silly, whispered conversation about the morning habits of their neighbours (someone is snoring uproariously below them; someone else is singing in French). And then he lingers turning circles around her apartment, tidying away last night’s dishes, offering to straighten her curtains, finding his shoes.

She braves the cold to climb out of bed in her nightdress, wrapping herself in a blanket because she’s got no proper dressing gown – watches the way he blushes when she crosses the room to him like that, so undressed, and wraps her arms around him to tell him goodbye.

It’s not like they haven’t kissed before. But that first time was kinda hasty, sweet but stolen – this is different. When Barry pulls Iris to him it’s measured and careful, his glance asking for permission, his hand gentle at her waist. She meets his mouth with her own and just for a moment this is the whole world, here, between them – this precious, delicate thing they have created that no one else can touch.

Iris nips at his lower lip, very gently, and he makes this little appreciative sound in his chest and holds her tight. She has to let him go shortly after, or she won’t ever let him out of her apartment again.

Barry climbs out her window onto the fire escape and she watches him make his ungainly way down to the alley below, his hat in one hand, his basket tucked under his arm. He waves to her so enthusiastically that he stumbles and nearly trips over his own feet as he’s backing away, and she clings to her window sill and laughs until she aches for him – wants him back already, warm and safe beside her, in her arms.

He brought her paper flowers, that first date. He hadn’t been able to afford more than one real one, so he’d folded her a whole bouquet of roses out of old newspaper and foil – she keeps them on her table for weeks.

The next time he arrives he brings her a Duke Ellington record – Mood Indigo – which he apparently traded a friend of his several shifts at work for.

“I thought, if we could’ve gone out, on a second date, I would take a girl dancing,” Barry tells her, just a little sheepishly, “and I figured, if we can’t do that, maybe we could just… dance here? I mean, I can’t promise to be any good but – I can hold your hands and sway, if you want…”

Iris does want.

The heat of the day is still in the bones of the room; they sprawl on her bed for a little while, drinking wine, and not quite touching each other as they talk, Barry rolling the sleeves of his shirt up past his bony elbows and letting his leanly muscled forearms rest distractingly on his knees. Iris lies on her stomach and watches his forearms from over her wine glass – lets the collar of her blouse come undone.

And when it feels like they’ve had as much conversation about their respective days as can decently be had, Iris puts the record on, and makes Barry sit still until they get to the singer’s part.

“Now,” she says, springing to her feet, “now we dance to it.”

“Okay,” Barry agrees, letting her pull him with her to the centre of the room, amiably enough.

She positions his hands for him (bless the boy he really doesn’t know how to dance), and they hold each other, and sway. Outside the last of the sunlit evening is dying on the streets, and inside the record is drowning out the sounds of Iris’s neighbours, and Barry doesn’t once take his eyes off her face, before he leans down to kiss her.

It turns into one of those long, unhurried kisses that might go on forever – certainly it goes on for most of the rest of Mood Indigo, until only the hiss and scratch of the needle coming off the record alerts them both to exactly how long they’ve been stood there, like that. Iris has taken her shoes off, so she’s even shorter than him than she usually is, and she has to bend her back a little to accommodate him stooping to meet her.

Barry puts his hand to her jaw, touches her lips with his thumb, and suddenly Iris has gone light and shaky, looking up at him like that.

“I’m gonna marry you one day, Iris West,” he tells her, softly, and she feels something prickle under her skin.

“That’s a little forward for a second date, mister.” She reaches up to straighten his tie for him, doesn’t let her hands shake. “You’re keen, huh?”

“I mean it,” he replies, his voice soft but fervent, one arm still snug about her waist, the other at her shoulder. “Just you wait.”

 _I will_ , Iris thinks, standing up on her tip-toes to kiss him again.

That night they share the bed again, though she pulls him beneath the covers this time. Their clothes stay on, but they press together in the dark, her cheek on his chest, his arm around her shoulders.

“This’ll be what it’s like,” he whispers to her, “when we’re married. Just you and me, every night.”

“Maybe hopefully in a bed where your feet don’t hang off the end, though,” Iris replies, instead of pointing out that what he’s proposing is illegal, because she doesn’t want to invite that reality into this, not yet.

Barry laughs. “I don’t know. I could get used to it.”

She falls asleep in his arms, and thinks she could get used to this, too.

They date like this for months – he’s comes by the diner every day and she has to fight harder every time she sees him not to put her hands on him – and he comes round to her apartment every Saturday and usually stays the night. They eat and dance and talk; sometimes they read. She gets brave enough to show him some of her stories, and when he devours them, eager and enthusiastic, (“These are fantastic, Iris, you should get them published, I mean it.”) she hands him the one about him, in the future city with his superpowers, and her the intrepid reporter, and he lies on her bed reading that one over and over, like a little kid.

“But what happens next?” He asks, “does he get the girl, do you think? In the end?”

Iris smiles, nestling down next to him. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“He should,” Barry declares, “if you want him to. It’s your story.”

“Come dance with me, Barry.”

She puts on Mood Indigo again and they dance – although, really, they kiss, in the middle of her little square of empty floor space, which has become their custom. If they pretend that they’re dancing, they can go on kissing for a long, long time – a kiss being something that customarily has to end after a minute or so, at most, or lead to something else – something they’re both a little too proprietorial to approach quite yet. But when they dance, they can go on kissing for as long as the record lasts (longer, quite often), rocking and swaying in slow circles as they brush their mouths together, skirt their fingers over each other’s clothing.

When Barry falls asleep that night before Iris is ready to, she draws whiskers and a cat’s nose on him with her lipstick, because she is, apparently, still five years old at heart. And when he wakes up in the morning and sees himself in the mirror he laughs and grabs for her before she can escape him, shrieking, and smears the lipstick all over both of them kissing her.  

They don’t kiss on the bed, generally speaking. It’s a little risky, that kind of thing. So when she finds herself stretched out under him, against the pillows in her night dress, and he’s half on top of her only just aware of the position he’s gotten them into… it’s all a little new, all of a sudden, despite them sleeping next to each other almost every Saturday night since the spring. Barry lets his forehead drop to hers for a moment, threading their fingers together, brushing his nose to hers.

“I love you, Iris.”

And suddenly even with her lipstick all over him this isn’t the least bit funny.

“I love you too,” she breathes, meaning it, all the way down to her bones.

If he were a different sort of man, Barry would probably try to undress her right about now (not least because right about now, she’d let him), but he doesn’t. He just holds her hands and gives her another gentle kiss, before rolling off her, into her customary place against the wall. She keeps hold of his hands.

“Would you marry me, if we could – if it were legal?” Barry glances at her from under his eyelashes. “Would you want to?”

“I haven’t thought much about marrying anyone,” she tells him, truthfully. “But maybe – Barry. Maybe. Gotta reckon you’re the only guy I ever could, if I were gonna.”

He smiles, eases closer so their foreheads are almost touching. “I mean it. When I say I’ll marry you one day. If you want. I’ll stay with you just as long as you want me and if you want to get married you say the word and we’ll find a way. I can’t say I’m exactly a catch – I’ve not got much of anything, besides you. But I’m not going anywhere, not unless you tell me to leave.”

And he means it, doesn’t he? God damn it. She smoothes his hair out of his face for a moment, draws his knuckles to her lips to kiss them.

Then she gets up to fetch him a facecloth, and helps him wipe the lipstick off his face, whilst he laughs and pretends he doesn’t like the way she’s fussing over him.

That day Barry stays with her, just curls up with her in her bed – they spend the whole dreamy, summer Sunday nestled together, re-reading old paperbacks and listening to records and kissing, in her bed, where they probably shouldn’t be kissing if she’s intent on keeping her virtue.

Not, especially, that she believes there’s any such thing. But she’s also not stupid enough to think that getting pregnant by a white boy who is, despite his best intentions, not actually her husband right now, would be anything but a disaster. So there will be plenty of virtue, however intimate they remain. And kissing in her bed, huddled together with his long, gentle fingers stroking her jaw, her throat, her hands running appreciatively around his leanly muscular shoulders, down his back, pulling him close so that they’re pressed chest to chest… well that all feels plenty intimate indeed.


	3. Till You've Had That Mood Indigo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry and Iris deal with the realities of their situation, as only they can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: one specific incident of racial abuse is described here, not physically violent, but ugly, involves spitting.
> 
> (Also, there's smut in this chapter.)

On their wedding night, two years later, Barry admits, stuttering and blushing, that, like Iris, he’s never done this before. He apologises, promises he’ll try to learn quick but, they don’t write much that’s helpful in books about this sort of thing.

He started reading the minute it became the anti-miscegenation laws in their state were going to be repealed – the minute he plucked up the courage to buy her a ring, to hope that they might, finally, be able to get married – which she teases him about for the next twenty years. But the point is, though he’s tried, he really has, to research the – correct – ways – he doesn’t know much more than the basic mechanics of the situation.

So she pulls her beautiful husband down next to her and promises him they’ll work it out together. And they do. Vigorously.

They’ve practised other forms of closeness, of course. Once or twice.

When there have been ugly things said or done to Iris, though she has found many, many ways to cope with the ugliness of the world, she finds the best one, the day she is spat at when walking with Barry down the street outside the diner.

They aren’t holding hands or arm in arm the way a regular couple might walk – they’re just walking, side by side. They are careful, in public. Regular customers at the diner know that they are friends, that sometimes Barry walks Iris home at night, to see that she’s safe – and though there are one or two whispers about them, most of the regulars like Iris well enough, and she isn’t the only black woman who works there, and there are some black customers, and she has otherwise learned how to be invisible enough that no one else regularly notices her. And certainly people tend not to notice quiet, gentle Barry, who is white and a man and so may generally go about his business unnoticed by anyone he doesn’t want noticing him.

It’s been a year or so, like this. So they have gotten used to being able to walk home, carefully, together, without trouble.

Until Iris is spat at, by a woman who looks a little younger than her, pale and freckled, her expression mocking as she walks away, back to a giggling group of friends, who probably put her up to it.

Iris is distantly glad that it was a girl – Barry would have hit a guy.

As it is she watches him take two steps after the freckled woman, and then shake, his jaw locked, his face scarlet – Iris only quietly finds her handkerchief, and wipes the spit out of her hair as best she can. She’s pretty sure the woman was aiming for her face – thank god for white girls with lousy aim.

Barry comes to help her but she pushes him away. They’re in public. They can’t be like that in public.

They make their way back to her place, Barry a quiet, quaking storm cloud at her side – and somehow that helps because Iris can’t be upset until she’s out of Barry’s sight. She knows he’ll get worse if she reacts, and she can’t have that here on the street.

“I’m coming in,” he tells her, quietly, even though it’s only Thursday and they haven’t ever spent a weeknight together.

“Barry…” She glances at him, as they linger at the entrance of her building. This is a Black neighbourhood, they’re relatively safe from prying eyes here, but she’s still wary of unnecessary risk.

“Iris.” His hand is on her arm.

“Just – go round the back.”

He goes, and she’s in her own apartment before he’s managed to scale the fire escape, alone for a moment, able to take a breath. She props her window open before she pours water from a jug into a basin and uses a cloth to make herself feel clean. Something about the sight of her own reflection, in the mirror above her table, makes her chest seize up.

By the time Barry has come in by the fire escape, sliding the window closed behind him, Iris is doubled over the table, sobbing.

“Hey,” he pulls her up, into his arms, “hey, hey, shhh.”

She doesn’t bother to _shhh_ , though. There doesn’t seem much point, now she’s started crying – she might as well see it through properly.

“I’m so tired, Barry,” she manages, when she has enough breath to get words out, “I’m so damn tired.”

“I know.”

“It never ends – it _never_ ends…”

“It’ll get better – ”

“I don’t need it to get better, I need it to be better, right now,” Iris squeezes him, tightly. “I can’t stand this.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, rubbing her back.

Iris heaves a deep, shaky breath, then reaches up to kiss him, tugging his chin down to her, because right now she can think of only one way this can all get much better.

He kisses her back, fervent and tender, and when she nips at his lower lip he obliges her, deepens the kiss, lets her tug at his shirt, pulling him back a few steps to her bed.

“Iris,” his voice has a rough edge to it as she pushes him, her fingers finding his belt buckle.

“What, are you saving yourself for marriage?” Iris asks, and he takes her by the shoulders to look at her seriously.

“Actually.”

“Barry…” Iris groans, takes hold of his shirt again, “then this will never happen. We’re illegal.”

“We won’t be for much longer – they’re repealing – ”

“You really think they will?” Iris demands, eyes narrowing, “honestly? You trust it’ll actually happen any time in the next five years? In the next ten?”

Barry exhales, softly, glancing down.

“I’m sick of all of it,” Iris grits her teeth, “we’re waiting for someone else’s say so for – someone like that, like her. You think someone like that white girl spitting on me – you want to wait on her say so before we do something so basic – so human – ? If I want you and you want me we should be able to have each other, we should be able to get married if we want and we can’t do that either – I mean unless you wanna move six states away…”

Barry cups her face, gently. “If that’s what you want, we’ll go.”

Iris manages a sharp, hiccupping laugh – it comes out closer to a sob. “No. I just want you.”

“Okay,” he pulls her close against him again. “Lay down on the bed.”

She glances up at him. “You sure?”

“I have an idea. Something I read about one time.”

Iris sniffs, rubbing her eyes, watching the way his mouth tugs at the corners. “An idea, huh?”

“Yeah,” he murmurs, giving her a nudge, and she obliges, climbing onto the bed, taking his hand to pull him with her.

“What sort of idea?”

His ears are flushed red but his gaze is intent, as she wraps her arms round his shoulders, tangling their legs together. “I wanna kiss you somewhere.”

“Kiss me?”

“Mhm.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere…” he glances down, then meets her gaze, tentatively, his voice low, “someplace – not your mouth.”

Iris feels her skin prickle. “Huh.”

“You… you want me to try it?” He offers, softly.

“Have I not made my preferences here totally clear?”

Barry laughs, just a little self-consciously, and Iris pushes her face up to his to kiss him again.

He makes his way down her body with careful reverence, trailing his mouth over the fabric of her dress, mapping his course with his fingers – Iris feels herself go warm, gazing up at the cracks in her ceiling, the room turning dusky as the evening draws in.

“Barry.”

“Yeah?” He is stroking the hem of her dress back off her thighs, finding her slip beneath and reaching to unclip one of her stockings. Iris’s heart skitters up against her ribs.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?”

“No,” he grins at her, sheepish and warm. “You want me to stop?”

“No. Just don’t ladder my stockings.”

“Promise.”

He presses his open mouth to the inside of her thigh – her bare thigh – and her stomach flutters. “Barry.”

“Yeah?”

“Do that again.”

She can feel Barry’s smile against her skin. He does it again – and again – sucks gently, and then moves a little further up. He has to push her slip all the way out of the way to get to the waist of her step-ins, and there he hesitates, his fingers on her hips, his breath warm against her naval. He kisses her there, too – the brush of his tongue could almost be accidental.

“Keep going,” Iris murmurs, shifting a little beneath him, and he does.

He kisses the fabric of her underwear, and Iris can feel the heat and damp of his mouth through the linen, and all she can think about is how this is the sort of thing she should be writing stories about – the soft quiet of a nice boy pressing his mouth to her sex as she sprawls on her bed and listens to the muted movements of her neighbours above, the city outside. This is where there is divinity left in the world, she thinks – this is what art should feel like.

“I love you,” she whispers, to the gathering dark.

He kisses her again, and opens his mouth properly to move his tongue against her, the friction between that and the fabric still covering her sends something throbbing straight through her core – heat gathers and pools under her naval. She lifts her hips a little, makes a startled, involuntary sound and he stops, glancing up at her, his eyes widening.

“Okay?”

Iris nods, vigorously. “Do that again.”

He does. Iris reaches down with one hand, let’s herself touch his head, run her fingers through his hair – thinks _this is real_ – and lifts her hips against his mouth. Barry, bless him, doesn’t stop but presses back harder, and hums, softly, which does – something – to her – god –

Iris feels something go through her in a wave, a slow, steady roll of nerve endings flickering up her spine. This is like what she can do to herself with her fingers, but it’s not. It’s not as intense, because Barry doesn’t know how to do this as well as she does – but it’s somehow sharper, brighter, more immediate. When she touches herself she’s imagining other things: the characters from her stories or sometimes herself and – whoever she likes. Movie stars and singers and lately Barry – she’s been picturing Barry a lot.

But this isn’t picturing or dreaming or imaging herself in some other place. This is happening now and she doesn’t want to be anywhere but in her own bed, with him.

She sinks the fingers of one hand into his hair and lets the world outside go small in her head.

And maybe it’s the strange, pleasurably meditative half hour that follows, or maybe she’d known what she wanted – needed – to do for weeks, for months, maybe always – and it only takes the little earthquake Barry is inducing in her soul to shake it loose. But there is a moment of blinding clarity for Iris West, as she’s close to coming apart under Barry’s gentle ministrations. In the dark, on her bed with her sweetheart kissing between her legs, Iris decides to write a novel – publish it under her own name, from a white publisher, and screw anyone who gets in her way.  
  
***  
They put Barry’s father in the electric chair nearly a year later. Barry visits him, once, in Iron Heights, before it happens – but his father forbids him from witnessing his death, so Barry stands outside the prison, and waits, and eventually he returns to Central City with the last of his father’s possessions in a brown paper bag, like the one Iris used to slip him free bagels in. They have buried his father in the prison grounds – Barry didn’t witness that, either.

That night he lays his head in Iris’s lap and sobs like a little boy.

Iris has no idea what to do for him. She strokes his hair and lets him cry until he can no longer make a noise, until her skirts are damp with his tears, and feels wretched and sick and useless and awful for him, for her poor, sweet brainiac who doesn’t deserve an inch of this misery.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, softly.

“Don’t ever leave me, Iris,” he replies, gazing up at her, “please, you’re all I have.”

“Promise,” she says, stroking her thumb along his jaw. He falls asleep in her bed and stays there for several days – until he really does have to pick himself up and go back to work if he doesn’t want to lose his job.

But the evening after that he comes back to her with a ring. And there isn’t room in her little place for him to go down on one knee (damn his ridiculously long legs) so instead he puts That Mood Indigo on the record player, peels her off her typewriter and has her lay next to him on the bed. There, sheepish and quiet, he slides the ring onto her finger, without a word, his pale face scarlet in the dim evening light – it’s a thin silver band, no adornment, no jewels – and even then Iris has a suspicion he’s pawned a couple of things he shouldn’t have to be able to afford it. But damn, now he’s presented it to her she’s not going to be able to make herself tell him to take it back.

Instead she takes his face in her hands and kisses him until he manages to get the words out.

“Do you wanna – ”

“Yes. You know I do.”

“Oh thank god.”

She giggles at him. “I thought we said we’d get married ages ago, if they ever let us.”

“They’re gonna let us. Any day now.” Barry wraps an arm around her, holds her hand – the one with the ring – over his heart, “the governor just has to sign. It’s gonna happen, Iris. We’re on the right side of this thing.”

She looks at his small, determined smile and she’s very glad he’s hers.

“Besides – I wanted to – be formal,” he adds, self-consciously. “You deserve a ring.”

She kisses him again. “I deserve you, Barry Allen.”

“And I’ll do my damndest to be worthy of you, Iris, I swear – ”

“Hush, hush, baby.” She kisses him – she can’t seem to make herself stop kissing him. “You hush, now.”

They don’t say anything for a long while after that. 


	4. That feelin' goes stealin' down to my shoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry Allen gets himself shot, Iris West gets published, gets married, gets her own way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter! Thanks everyone who stuck with me. ^_^

And then Barry Allen takes it into his head to get between the mayor of Starling City and a bullet.

What follows ranks as one of the worst hours of Iris’ life.

“I knew her,” Barry tells Iris, excitedly, on their way to hear Oliver Queen speak, “his wife – Felicity. We grew up in the same orphanage.”

“You sure it’s her?” Iris raises her eyebrows.

“Yeah – she writes to me sometimes,” Barry shrugs. “We lost track of each other after a while – she was always so smart, but I worried, you know? A lot can go wrong for a girl with no money, even these days. Last I heard she’d made her way to Starling – then – there she is in the society pages, marrying some billionaire. Crazy, huh? She wrote me a little while after that, just to say hi. I thought it was sweet of her. And they say this Queen guy’s alright. He’s for desegregation, anyway.”

So they go to see Mr Queen talk in front of city hall, and Barry gets himself shot.

They are separated by the crowd almost immediately, and Iris can hardly hear herself screaming over the sudden roar of noise, the chaos that erupts. She can register, vaguely, the surge of bodies, Mr Queen and his wife being hustled away, a man with a gun being hauled from the crowd by one of Mr Queen’s bodyguards – but all Iris can truly see is the flailing parts of Barry through the crowd, and the scarlet streak on the flagstones beneath him, growing.

She can’t get to him. There are too many people and too much noise, and by the time she’s untangled herself from all of them Barry is already being hoisted into an ambulance. The blood on the flagstones has pooled into a puddle that she has to dance to avoid stepping in.

It’s not hard to work out which hospital he’s been taken to – the nearest is only a couple of blocks away, thank god – but it’s also segregated, of course, and there Iris finds herself battered up against the awful truth that there is no way she will be allowed to see him.

The love of her life is in there hurting, and if she goes in and demands her place at his bedside, she’ll be laughed out the door if not arrested. Iris finds herself lingering by the coloured entrance, chewing her lip raw, and sobbing in small, painful bouts, angry with herself, with the hospital, with Mr Queen for so much as daring to exist in such a way that would put Barry in danger.

That’s where the nurse finds her.

“You alright, ma’am?” He is a short, Spanish looking young guy, clean and orderly under his uniform, his dark hair up in a neat bun behind his head, his expression one of genuine concern.

Iris shakes her head, because she’s not sure she’s capable of any kind of dignified human conversation. The nurse offers her a handkerchief.

“I carry them around,” he tells her, conversationally, as she tries to clean herself up, “we get a lot of that here. My name’s Ramon. Nurse Ramon. Cisco, since I’m on my break. Can I help you with anything?”

And somehow Iris finds herself telling him everything.

She couldn’t, from that day to this, tell anyone why she trusts him in that moment – but thank god she does. Perhaps because his is the first genuine kindness she’s encountered in the entire time she’s been stood there. Cisco nods, and nods, and his eyes grow wide, and then concerned.

“He’s my fiancé,” her voice cracks on the word, as she twists and twists the silver ring around her finger. “Please – he hasn’t got anyone else – ”

Cisco takes her arm.

 “Come with me,” he says, “I know a doctor that’ll help you. She’s good people. Come.”

The doctor’s name is Snow – Caitlin – and when they reach her, she’s in the process of shouting at an orderly who has apparently just mistaken her for a nurse for (if what she’s shouting is anything to go by) the third time that week. She is a slight, mouse-y looking white woman, and when Cisco pulls her aside, the look she casts Iris isn’t one of derision or scorn or disbelief, any one of which Iris would absolutely have expected. Instead she pats Iris’s elbow, just a little awkwardly, and leads them toward a service elevator, up a back flight of stairs, and then into a corridor that has apparently been closed to the general public.

“This is where it might get tricky,” she warns Iris, breezily, “don’t worry, I’ll handle it.” Cisco, who has followed them, gives Iris another reassuring smile.

“I’ve never known her to not get her way,” he tells her, “watch this.”

There’s another doctor there, tall and wiry and answering to ‘Wells’, who absolutely gives Iris the look of derision, and scorn, and disbelief that she was expecting. And then he says something along the lines of getting ‘that’ out of here and Iris finds herself wishing fervently for pepper spray, or a bolt of lightening, or just – god – anything to make him hurt as much as she does.

Then, out of one of the little rooms on this corridor, emerges a tall black man in an expensive suit, calmly buttoning the sleeves of his jacket with equally expensive looking cufflinks, and he looks calmly at both doctors, then at Iris and Cisco.

“Is there a problem here?”

“I – ” Wells begins, and Dr Snow interrupts him.

“Miss West would like to see her fiancé,” she states, arms folded, jaw set.

“Her fiancé?”

“Yes, the man who took a bullet for your boss this afternoon,” Dr Snow keeps talking before Dr Wells can shut her down, “He hasn’t got any other family. I’ll warrant he’d be grateful if the hospital would see fit to let his future wife go to him.”

The man arches an eyebrow at Iris. “You engaged to that skinny white boy?”

“It’ll be legal any day now,” Iris replies, defiantly, “and he’s not that skinny.”

And something about that sentiment makes him smile.

“It’s legal some places already” He opens the door he’s just come out of, “why don’t you come with me, Miss West?”

Dr Wells looks willing to protest, and the man only smiles at him, coldly. “You want to have security drag her out of here, they can come drag me out first. And I’d warrant Mr Queen would not take kindly to the removal of his bodyguard at this time. So, you’re gonna let us be, Dr Wells.”

Dr Wells goes a colour rarely seen in nature, but Iris has already taken the bodyguard’s arm to let herself be escorted past him, into the room – Cisco and Dr Snow follow, and hover at the door like they’re on guard.

“John Diggle,” the bodyguard introduces himself, a great deal more gently, once they’re inside, the door closed, “you picked a brave young man, Miss West.”

“I think I’d rather he wasn’t so brave, right at this very moment,” Iris admits, and Mr Diggle smiles.

The room turns out actually to be most of the ward, carefully sectioned off with curtains – Mr Queen appears to have set himself up a base of operations; there are more of his bodyguards, a woman who might be his secretary, another, slight and terribly young looking under all her silks and pearls, whom Iris recognises from the newspapers as Mr Queen’s younger sister, a fixture of the socialite scene over in Starling. Everyone talks in hushed, church-y whispers, and through one curtain Iris catches a glimpse of Mr Queen himself, with his shirt undone, a very great deal of scarred flesh visible beneath, his wife tucked under his arm as a doctor listens to his heart.

Girl doesn’t know how lucky she is, Iris thinks, biting at her lip again. She has a nasty pit in her stomach – all these hushed people, the air with its unnervingly funerial edge. Mr Diggle walks her past them all, his presence the steady, stern authority of a school teacher or – no – a soldier, Iris realises, his pace has a certain military gate.

“Please,” she whispers to Mr Diggle, “please, is he dead? Did Barry die?”

And he squeezes her arm.

“No, Miss West,” he tells her, “kid’s perfectly fine. Though he’s got a brand new hole in his shoulder. Here.”

And he pulls back a curtain at the end of the room, and there’s Barry, like a plucked chicken, all pale gooseflesh and limp limbs, tucked into a bed with a tube stuck in his arm, a bag of blood hung over his head. He looks awful, but he smiles at Iris and Iris could swear it’s the best thing she’s seen all day.

“Oh lord,” she feels something in her unknot, could almost be sick with relief, “oh, Barry.”

“Iris,” he starts trying to push himself up on his good arm and Iris hurries to his side to push him back down, “I was so scared they wouldn’t let you in – ”

“They tried,” Iris wraps her arms around him, and tries very hard not to start weeping into his neck, “but I’m here. Okay? I’m right here.”

“Thank god,” he replies, wrapping his uninjured arm around her, squeezing tight. He smells like iodine and blood and sweat.

Iris cradles his jaw with her hands for a moment, looking into his face, smoothing his hair where it’s got all ruffled from the bed. There’s a dressing seeping through with a dark, rusty stain on his shoulder, and he’s even paler than normal, but his breath is warm against her cheek, his smile familiar. She’s vaguely aware of Dr Snow picking up the chart at the end of Barry’s bed – of Cisco checking the line between Barry and the bag of blood – little, reflexive, almost domestic feeling tasks, like something Iris would read about in a book or see in a picture. She unknots a little further, stroking Barry’s jaw with her thumbs.

“Please don’t ever do anything like this again,” she asks, softly, and Barry’s mouth quirks, a little sheepish.

“Someone would of died, Iris.”

“Well, I prefer you saving lives in my stories, where I can give you superpowers to keep you safe,” She gives him a gentle little shake, just to make her point, and then kisses him, just to make another.

John Diggle is still stood by, watching them, and Dr Snow is pretending to be very involved with Barry’s chart and Nurse Ramon is lingering by the window – in fact that curtain’s open enough that half the room must be able to see them. It’s the first time Iris has ever kissed Barry where anyone could see it – ever touched him at all, in fact. And she doesn’t give a damn in hell, and neither does he.

When she appears, lingering at the curtain, like she fears intruding, Mrs Queen has the same slightly starved-rabbit frame as Barry. Iris suspects it may be the hallmark of all those unfortunate enough to have been raised in orphanages during the worst of the recession, like neither of them ever quite got enough food to grow into themselves.

“You must be Miss West,” she offers, softly, “Barry’s last letter was all about you.”

Iris fights an instinct to let go of Barry’s hand – keeps a tight hold of it instead, watching the woman warily. Mr Diggle has stayed nearby – on guard, Iris suspects – and it makes her feel a little safer, the large man stood between her and any attempt to remove her from Barry’s bedside. And Mrs Queen and he seem to acknowledge each other as equals, although Iris still isn’t sure she can bring herself to trust in the decency of rich white folks too immediately.

 “Hey, Felicity,” Barry smiles at her; he’s almost through the bag of blood, and his colour is coming back a little, “how’s um – how’s that big rich husband of yours?”

“Big and rich,” Mrs Queen replies, something affectionate in her tone, “but quite whole, thanks to your efforts.”

Barry shrugs, awkwardly. “It was nothing.”

“It was pretty much the opposite of nothing,” Iris prods him in the ribs, “thank you very much.”

Mrs Queen’s expression is amused, though there’s no edge of mockery in it. “He’d like to see you, though he won’t say so, cause he’s a sap. Shall I persuade him to come over?”

Barry glances up at Iris, as if awaiting her permission, so she shrugs. “Sure.” Why not? Why not invite a billionaire mayor into the rest of this ridiculousness?

Felicity smiles again, and disappears. And Iris keeps hold of Barry’s hand, and he rubs his thumb over her ring.

Oliver Queen is neither as tall as Barry nor as broad as Mr Diggle, but he fills the space, somehow, carries the heavy air of someone twice his age. There are rumours of things he did during the war, Iris knows – that he went missing for a spell, or that he was a spy, or that he was in a POW camp, or some combination of all of these things – and looking at him, she’d believe it. She could come up with a trilogy of novels about a man like this right on the spot, although she suspects there are enough novels about men like Oliver Queen. She’d rather pick a little of John Diggle’s story to tell, if she’s honest. He must have been a soldier, too. Perhaps he was held captive. Perhaps that’s how they met? Or is that too obvious?

She eyes them both, wondering if it would be rude to ask.

“Miss West is Mr Allen’s fiancé,” Mr Diggle tells Mr Queen, at his questioning glance, and Mr Queen nods, as if this were an entirely regular state of affairs, and shakes Iris’s hand as he does Barry’s, with a surprisingly gentle deference.

“We will be paying your medical bills,” he tells Barry, “and for any lost wages you have taking time off work. And you will likely need rehabilitation in that shoulder so – that will covered, too.”

“What my husband would like to say,” Mrs Queen puts in, and Iris can’t help it – she kinda likes this woman, just a little – gripping Mr Queen’s elbow authoritatively, “is that he is very grateful to you for saving his life and he’s pleased to meet my childhood friend, although he wishes the circumstances were different.”

“Yes,” Mr Queen glances at her, wryly, “that too.”

“And I’d suggest,” Mr Diggle is lounging against the wall, filing his nails, “that we come up with something to make sure Miss West can visit with Mr Allen unimpeded.”

“Yes,” Mr Queen nods, “yes, thank you, Mr Diggle, we’ll make sure there’s some arrangement – Felicity, how much would it cost us to buy this hospital?”

“Comparatively little given how rich you are,” Mrs Queen shrugs.

“Right, well, call Miss Lance – I need to buy this hospital today. Immediately.”

“You’re going to give her such a migraine.”

“She knew whose lawyer she was signing on as,” Mr Queen waves a hand, frowning slightly, “We buy it, we desegregate it, starting today. And – you,” he beckons Nurse Ramon, who is standing just beyond the curtain with his mouth hanging open, “can you meet Miss West at the entrance when she comes to visit and escort her to her fiancé? Every day? To prevent – any unfortunate obstructions?”

“I…” Cisco is still agape. Dr Snow intervenes.

“I can do it,” she says, “Cisco – Nurse Ramon and I can take it in turns.”

Mr Queen nods, satisfied, then arches an eyebrow at Iris. “How’s that, Miss West?”

Iris glances down at Barry, who looks back up at her, his smile crooked.

“That’ll do just fine, Mr Queen,” Iris tells him, after a moment.

“Good,” Oliver nods and then, clearly not a man given to sentimentality, he turns on his heal and leaves. Mrs Queen flashes them an apologetic look, and follows him.

Iris, watching Mr Diggle, who seems entirely too amused by the entire encounter, lofts a brow at him.

“Why is he helping us?”

“I did save his life, Iris,” Barry points out, from the bed.

“Well,” Mr Diggle puts his nail file away, “there’s the fact that from the angle of attack, that bullet would have gone through Felicity before it went through Oliver. Which I think you know,” he jerks his head at Barry, “and Oliver certainly does. And he couldn’t give two shakes about his own life, not these days, but you stop a bullet for his wife and he’ll hang the moon for you, Mr Allen. Plus,” he pauses, removes a wallet from his jacket pocket, opens it and slides free a formal photo, grey toned and slightly creased, “he was best man at my wedding.”

In the photo, John Diggle stands with a white woman, in a sensible dress of the wartime cut variety, her hair in pin curls, her smile easy, leaning on his arm. She has a toddler on her hip, small hand fastened on her mother’s shoulder, dark little fly away curls stuck up in puffs on top of her head, and Iris looks at that baby and feels something in her gut twist.

“Lyla and I would’ve found a way to make it, one way or another,” Mr Diggle pockets the photo again with a wry smile, “but can’t say that having Oliver Queen about, buying hospitals and staring menacingly at city hall officiants didn’t help.”

Barry grins, “what’s the baby’s name?”

“Sara.”

“Don’t you get any ideas,” Iris gives Barry another little prod, “one thing at a time.” She’s planning on having a bunch of books before she has a bunch of babies, anyway.

Mr Diggle laughs as Barry flushes.  “You kids ever think of heading to one of the states where it’s legal?”

“We shouldn’t have to,” Iris replies, and Mr Diggle’s expression suggests that he can’t disagree.

“Well, take care of each other,” he adjusts his tie, “I’m going to go get between Oliver and that lawyer of his when she finds out he’s making significant property purchases without legal council again.”

***

Caitlin and Cisco keep to their word. For the next three days, Cisco meets Iris outside the hospital – currently being renamed the Andrew Diggle Memorial – and walks her to the ward where Barry is recovering. He most usually brings some kind of candy, seems perpetually to be chewing gum or slurping soda, and he’s so bright and cheerful that Iris is always glad of his company. He talks to her about some medical device he’s building that’s going to make his fortune, and about his brother, the piano protégé, and about Oliver Queen’s lawyer, a Ms Lance, who has been striding about the place overseeing the purchase and who Cisco is apparently smitten by.

“She’s real beautiful,” Cisco explains, contentedly, “like an actress, you know? A lady like that could have any guy she wants but I think she’s sweet on me.” And he grins a bright, dimpled grin and Iris laughs because his sunny optimism is a brilliant relief.

Caitlin, by contrast, is a misty day – a small steady cloud of sorrow, occasionally prickling with thunder and lightning – though Iris can spot, beneath that, the softness of someone genuinely kind.

 “How’d you end up a doctor?” She asks Caitlin, one day, and Caitlin shrugs.

“I made up my mind that that was what I was going to do.”

“How’d your parents feel when you told them?”

“Oh, they were wise enough not to try to talk me out of it,” and Caitlin smiles, briefly.

“Must be hard to find a guy who’s okay with you being so highly qualified, though,” Iris is just making small talk, really, though she sees immediately that she’s struck a nerve because Caitlin stiffens up all over like she’s been hit with a static shock.

“Well, they aren’t worth my time if they can’t take me as I am,” is all she says in reply, after a moment, and Iris has the odd urge to apologise – that’s the first time she notices the ring Caitlin wears, on the wrong hand, but still – a marriage band.

“She lost her husband, in the war,” Cisco tells Iris, quietly, “just a heads up. I saw you looking at her ring earlier – if you were gonna ask about it, you’re kinda better to just not. She’s still real cut up, you know?”

“Oh,” Iris frowns because yes, actually, that explains a lot. “Did you know him?”

“Ronnie, yeah. Great guy,” Cisco frowns, his own sunniness momentarily dimming, “yeah, he was nice. He was a construction worker, if you can believe that. Helped build the new wing of this hospital, a few years back. That’s how they met.”

Iris is of course immediately prickling with curiosity – the lady doctor and the blue collar construction worker – how did that work? Caitlin is so clearly upper middle class; her accent cut-glass, her manners pretty, her entitlement absolute; a construction worker wouldn’t be moneyed at all. Did they have to fight their families to be together? (Better their families than the government at large, she supposes). But already she can formulate some sweet, strange, tragic romance – a subplot to run through her next novel, maybe – though really she shouldn’t be thinking about real people that way.

“They, uh,” Cisco adjusts his grip on the soda pop he’s sipping, his brow furrowed, “they never recovered his body. Ronnie. That’s why Caitlin’s still got the ring on. I think she sort of – she still thinks he might just walk back in here one day. You know?”

Iris has a sudden and desperate urge to break into a run, get to Barry’s room immediately to hug him. And for all it was several years before she’d met him, she’s also inordinately glad that Barry had been prevented from military service because of how malnourished he’d been as a kid.

(“Crappy lungs and no muscle tone,” he’d told her, a little sheepishly, a long time ago now, when she’d asked if he’d been in the war. “I tried to sign up as soon as I was old enough to go, but they didn’t want a string bean like me.”

“Thank God,” Iris had replied, and kissed him.)

Iris doesn’t like to think of the number of young guys who just went out and turned to dust, not even a body to bring back and bury. How many women like Caitlin must be wondering around with their rings still on, too proud to hope out loud?

“I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d lost Barry like that,” she shakes her head, slowly.

“Yeah, Caitlin knows that,” Cisco replies, softly. “S’why she likes helping people. She reckons, if she can’t be happy – I mean, right now – she can try to sort other people out a little, at least. Plus she knows it’s what Ronnie’d want her to be doing.”

“Real love,” Caitlin states, the next day, out of the blue and with her own considered bluntness, “is very rare, I think. And fleeting. But if the government had told me I couldn’t marry someone I loved, couldn’t even be with him in public at all, I’d have gone out of my mind. I’m quite glad you and Barry won’t have to put up with that anymore.”

And Iris thinks Caitlin is being naïve, because a law on the turn doesn’t change a culture, nor centuries of ugliness stamped into white folks like gum in a rug. But she appreciates the sentiment, and gives Caitlin’s arm a gentle squeeze.

Barry is released from hospital that afternoon, his arm in a sling, his wound clean and healing. Iris takes him back to her place and tucks him into her bed and then crawls in next to him for the first time in a week. Even with his arm wrapped up his embrace feels like home.

***  
Joe West gets off the train in Central City Station and for the first time in her life Iris sees how her father looks small in the crowd, his shoulders stooped under his coat. Has he lost weight? She swallows her worry when he sees her – takes off his hat, his expression immediately warm, though his face wrinkles up at angles it didn’t the last time she saw him.

He smells exactly like he should, and he squeezes her just the way she remembers, and for a moment, wrapped up in his arms, she’s five years old and still strongly of the belief that this man can pull stars down from the sky for her, hang the moon at night for her.

“Baby,” he says to her, when he cups his face to check on her the same way he did when she was little, “you look so well – did you get taller?”

She laughs, because he knows fine well that she hasn’t grown half an inch since she was thirteen years old. “That’s just my shoes, daddy.”

“Oh, well – and good shoes they are too,” she sees the quizzical quirk of his brow as he takes them in. Expensive shoes. Expensive lace gloves, too, she’s wearing, and a new coat, and a fashionable hat. Perhaps she should have picked from some of her older clothes. Her father was not amongst the first generation of black police officers in Central City for nothing (for all he quit the force many years previously, for work that would grind on his conscience a little less). There isn’t ever much that gets past his notice. Such things as finery a waitress is not ordinarily in a position to fund are absolutely going to come to his attention.

But then, this is a visit especially arranged in order to attain a certain new level of honesty between them. She’s promised herself that the days of hiding the specific details of her life from him are over.

One very specific detail in particular, anyway.

“They’re new,” she takes his arm as she escorts him out of the station, “daddy, I wanted you to meet someone.”

“Someone?”

“Yes.”

He arches an eyebrow at her. “You about to produce a husband you’ve been keeping from me? ‘Cause I will be mightily displeased to have missed my only child’s wedding.”

Iris swallows. “He’s not my husband.”

Her father’s gaze intensifies until she feels five years old again in a way that is far less reassuring than it was when he hugged her. “He?”

“You’ll like him, daddy. I promise.” She clasps her hands, “He’s a sweetheart. He’s gentle and kind and so smart – I’ve never met anyone so smart before –“

“Mmhm,” he shakes his head, slowly, “where abouts is this sweetheart, then?”

“I thought we could have dinner. All three of us.”

“That why you brought me out here?” He shakes his head at her, though there’s something teasing in his expression now – good, he’s not diametrically opposed to at least the theory of a boy, that’s good, (the practice is, of course, going to be a whole other matter), “you all twitterpated over some silly boy?”

“He’s not silly,” she prods him, “and that’s not the only thing. I have – good news. Okay? But I’m saving it for dinner. You have to wait.”

“Well that’s just unfair.”

“Well that’s the way it is.”

And he laughs at her – his own, easy, childish giggle from deep in his belly – and she feels the world ease a little around them as they walk on down the street.

Although any illusions she had about this being easy dissolve the moment she sees Barry rising from his seat in the diner where they’re having dinner (it felt fitting, somehow, to come here, where it all began), and watches her father register exactly who they’re meeting.

“Dad, this is Barry,” Iris takes a deep breath, prays the public setting will work in their favour and Joe West won’t actually take it into his head to assault a white man with half a dozen witnesses, “Barry Allen. Barry, this is my father, Joe West.”

Barry, bless him, looks about ready to keel over. “Nice to meet you, sir.” The hand he holds out to Joe trembles.

Joe looks at Barry, looks at Iris, looks at Barry’s outstretched (trembling) hand, then looks at Iris again. His eyebrows may actually be trying to exit his face they’re so far up his brow. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Iris…”

“ _Daddy_.” Iris refuses to blink, to look away, for all she can feel the heat creeping up the back of her neck. _Please God just shake his hand – just shake his hand –_

Joe grips Barry’s hand, firmly, shakes it once, then produces a handkerchief and starts compulsively mopping his brow as he sits down. Iris seats herself next to Barry, opposite her father, just to make absolutely clear how this is going to go down.

(She needs her father to accept this. God, she just needs him to accept it. He doesn’t have to like Barry – not right now – because frankly Iris can’t imagine Barry not growing on anyone eventually; liking will come. But just right now she needs him to accept it, because she’s getting married, and if she can’t have her father there it’ll break her heart in two).

“So how…” Joe is staring at them both like they’re a museum exhibit, “did this happen?”

“We met here,” Iris says, “when I worked here.”

“You don’t work here anymore?”

“That’s the other thing, I wanted to explain – just – in a moment,” she reaches across the table to pat her father’s hand. “Barry was a customer, he came in every morning for coffee and then some evenings for his dinner, and he was – kind.”

“Uh-huh.” Joe has narrowed his eyes at Barry and Barry’s ears are going scarlet under the scrutiny. “And he – what – bought you a hat?”

“Dad.”

“And shoes? And those gloves?”

“Dad,” Iris grits her teeth.

“Sir, I love your daughter,” Barry clasps his hands, earnestly, “I intend to marry her. There’s not been anything untoward between us.”

Not anything he needs to know about anyway, Iris reckons – Barry isn’t above repeating his trick where he goes kissing between her thighs from time to time.  But that’s been their one physical indulgence so far.

“And for the record, he hasn’t bought me so much as a thimble,” Iris drops her gloves on the table, emphatically, “these are my gloves, I got them with my own money. There’s a man who’s going to publish my book. He paid me an advance.”

Mason Bridge had not been easy to convince – but then he hadn’t counted on Iris standing in front of his car until he’d agreed to at least read the opening chapter of her novel (and then staying there, in front of his car, whilst he read, to make sure he actually did it and didn’t just take off and toss her manuscript).

“Your – book?” Joe blinks at her.

“I finished it,” Iris shrugs, like it didn’t take her eighteen months and no end of trouble, with Barry bringing her endless mugs of coffee and sometimes prying her off her typewriter in the evenings to make her sleep, “and there’s a big publisher who has it now.”

“What’s it about?”

“Barry,” Iris tells him, “except I made him a superhero. He lives in a city in the future, and he helps people.”

Barry’s entire neck has gone scarlet. Iris resists the urge to tweak one of his ears affectionately.

Joe’s gaze darts between them again, then he groans. “God.”

“Dad…”

“Baby, do you know how hard this gonna be?” He raises his eyebrows at her, “it’s been legal all of what – five minutes?”

“Three days,” Iris informs him, “and we applied for our marriage licence yesterday. And if they take it all back, then we’re moving somewhere where it’s legal and getting married there. And no one’s taking that from us.” She reaches for Barry’s hand, laces their fingers together on the table, where everyone and their dog will be able to see, because _screw them all_ , “And yes, we know how hard it’s gonna be. We’ve been living it. Barry and I have been steady for two years, more or less.”

“Two – ”Joe closes his mouth, abruptly, “when exactly were you planning on telling your old man?”

“We’re telling you now,” Iris says, gently. “He asked me to marry him. I said yes. So we’re telling you. Because I want you there.”

Joe passes a hand over his face, exhaling softly. “What do his folks say?”

“I don’t have any,” Barry replies, softly.

“Barry’s an orphan. He hasn’t got anyone except me,” Iris hasn’t let go of Barry’s hand.

Barry glances at her from under his eyelashes, all quiet adoration, and Joe groans again, low and resigned. “So this is love, huh?”

“Yes, daddy.”

Joe turns a steady gaze on Barry. “You love my daughter?” He asks, sternly. “Really, truly?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You ever hurt her, I will come for you, boy,” Joe folds his arms, “your death will not be pleasant, I am not playing with you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Iris squeezes Barry’s hand, tight. He squeezes back.  
  
***

Iris marries Barry in a small, secular ceremony in a town hall, with a handful of witnesses. Her dad is there, and walks her down the aisle mostly because that turns out to be the most convenient way to get her to the alter. And just before the ceremony, she finds him crying, and makes him take his handkerchief away from his face so she can ask him if he’s gonna go in there and object at the last moment, because she’d really like to be forewarned about such an eventuality, thanks. But Joe West only laughs, wetly, and tells her that he loves her, very, very much – then offers her his arm so he can take her inside.

She wears a simple dress, ivory cream dress – something pretty but which lets her walk; she was never much for gaudiness so she deliberately keeps everything elegant, clean. Barry’s suit doesn’t quite fit him. He’s so slight that getting anything long enough in the arms but harrow enough in the shoulders is still something of an Olympian feet even though they can now afford a proper tailor. But he looks handsome, still, careful and cleanly put together, like Iris herself. She feels like a matching set with him – like they’re two newly painted dolls, fresh out of the tissue paper, varnish still drying, bright and sticky.

Barry’s hand shakes until she takes it, quietly, his palm sweating through her lace glove, and then he takes a soft, deep breath and stills, soothed. They exchange a quick, conspiratorial glance before the city hall efficient begins to speak, and Iris knows there will be no taking this back, this moment, no matter how the world turns next.

Mason Bridge is there, pretending to be more begrudging than he is; there’s Linda Park, the Korean woman who works in Mason’s publishing house and who shouted at the doorman for presuming to prevent Iris getting into the building more than once. And there’s a sweet girl called Kendra Saunders, from Iris’s apartment building, who once caught Barry sneaking in and only offered to help hold his hat and coat rather than turn them in, and seemed so thrilled by the idea that they were getting married that Iris couldn’t help but invite her along.

Felicity Queen, John Diggle and his wife come, too – which is pleasant but a surprise. Barry had invited them without expecting they’d actually make it all the way over from Starling, but they arrive with cards and flowers and apologies from the mayor of Starling for his absence. Lyla Diggle has her daughter on her hip, a little girl of about three, who gamely pets at Iris’s dress and asks babbling, three year old questions the whole way through the ceremony.

Caitlin Snow and Cisco Ramon come, of course. They’ve stayed in contact, since Barry got out of hospital, and they remain the closest of any friends to know them as a couple. Indeed, they are the first real friends Iris has experienced knowing as part of being a unit with Barry, so it felt important that they be there. Cisco brings flowers and Caitlin brings a toaster which she apparently didn’t have time to wrap but proudly announces is brand new and up to the minute modern. Iris doesn’t have the heart to point out that they don’t really need a toaster (she’s been able to afford such things herself for a while now); the effort is sweet enough.

She appreciates more the passing down of a handful of her father’s classic records, of a sort that can’t be found in stores anymore and which she knows are not easy for him to part with. She takes them reverently from him, afterward, in the new apartment she and Barry are sharing together (officially it has been Barry’s for a month; but they moved in there together the moment he was handed the keys, and it is Iris’s name on the lease). Iris lays her father’s records carefully in the middle of the dinner table, where they stay for a week like some kind of sacrificial offering.

Caitlin goes misty and quiet the whole way through the ceremony, of course, and Iris knows she’s thinking about her husband. She was coaxed into showing Iris a photo once: a handsome, broad-shouldered man, with Caitlin slight and small in sepia tones at his side and looking happier than Iris has ever seen her in real life.

And Caitlin still manages to smile, genuinely, at least some of the time. Caitlin’s face in snippets throughout the day is one of dozens of other odd little details which lodge in Iris’s mind for no clear reason: Kendra blowing confetti for the baby to play with, Linda laughing and telling Mason to lighten up, Felicity pecking Barry on the cheek, John Diggle shaking her father’s hand.

And the look, clear and bright as the summer sky, on Barry’s face as he says his vows, and though his hands shake, his voice is steady and it makes Iris feel steady, too, because this is the best and most right thing she has ever done.

In Iris’s head, the day is a sort of halo– circular, golden as the sun – she wakes up next to Barry that morning, kisses him and whispers “we’re getting married, baby.” And she goes to sleep next to him that night, kisses him (and a great deal more more besides) and whispers, “we got married, baby.” And he smiles the same wide, sweet, sleepy smile each time.

That night, when everyone’s gone home and they’re alone, Iris puts _Mood Indigo_ on the record player in their new apartment and steps out of her shoes, stands in the middle of their bedroom in her stockings and her wedding dress. Barry’s sitting on the bed, watching her, with his shirt sleeves rolled up, his pale forearms loose on his knees, his top button undone, his tie coming out of its knot and his hair mussed. He’s watching her with his eyes bright under those long eyeslashes of his, and Iris holds out her arms.

“Come dance with your wife, Barry.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Barry wraps his arms around her, sturdy and warm, and tips his head down to hers to kiss her as they move in slow, soft circles.

“I love you so much, Iris,” he whispers to her, later, when they’re wrapped up in each other that night in bed, slick bare skin to skin. It’s the first time they’ve been really, truly naked together – earlier explorations still left them mostly clothed, and Iris is enjoying it, because even though they’ve been sharing an apartment and a bed for a month Barry has kept a gentlemanly distance, which has been about as delightful as it is frustrating.

This, here, feels kinda raw and dirty in the best way possible. Like, this is how humans always were before any weird notions about race or sex or class or country got built up to confuse matters: just naked and raw and dirty. Him pushing and grinding and groaning inside her felt sweet and easy – her grabbing at his shoulders and meeting him thrust for thrust, gasping thanks to god for this feeling – giving way to each other like a forest bending under a storm. They are old trees, cracked and broken, leaving room for the earth to scorch and the world to start over beneath their newly grounded limbs.

“I love you,” Barry repeats, in the pooling aftermath.

“Yeah, I figured you did,” Iris tells him and Barry laughs, softly, into her hair, which is still half in its pretty pin curls from the wedding. “We really got married, huh?”

“Yeah, we really did it,” Barry trails his fingers over her skin, like he can’t believe it, “we got married and then we did some other stuff and – yeah.”

“We sure did.” Iris giggles, adjusting her grip on him, feeling where she’s kinda sticky in ways she hasn’t ever been sticky before – it should be gross feeling, but it isn’t. It’s just her and Barry’s… stuff. All together inside her. She doesn’t mind it at all. They can have that, here, in bed alone – they can mix themselves up together and share their sweat and saliva and _stuff_ – and all it feels is good.

“We can do this all the time now, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” Iris grins, pressing closer to his chest, “I’m gonna suggest we dedicate at least the next month to it, okay? Let’s just not get out of bed.”

“You got yourself a deal, Mrs Allen.”

She snorts. “West-Allen, Mister.”

“Mrs West-Allen.”

Iris tugs at his chin so she can get at his mouth, nipping at his lower lip as Barry smiles.

***  
Once, two years later and a week after her third book hits the top of the best seller list, Iris sees her again – that freckled woman, the one who spat.

Iris is stood outside a dress shop, quietly re-applying her lipstick in the reflection of the window, and thinking about how nice it is that she could walk in there and buy anything she wanted, if she wanted, without having to worry about eating for the rest of the month, and not a damn thing those white sales girls could do about it, either. Then she catches sight of Freckles, in the reflection behind her. The same woman, she’s sure. Does she recognise Iris? Does she even remember that day?

Iris snaps the top back on her lipstick, and reaches for Barry’s hand – out here in the open, just like that, she takes her husband’s hand – takes it firmly, turns him around, and walks away with him down the street, without wasting a backward glance. 


End file.
